Still Life with
Fruit by Moise Kisling
1913 (Public
Domain)
Two of my favorite
poems relate to fruit: “After Apple Picking” by Robert Frost and “This is Just
to Say,” William Carlos Williams’s poem about the plums. Here are two contemporary poems about fruit:
Apple
The tight eye
of the apple
squeezed shut:
here, my
finger finds it
where the
wrinkled
sepals cluster
closed,
where once
blew the white blossom.
If I cut
across the
apple’s wide
horizon
inside I will
find
the star
unseen,
corecut star,
star-
flower
memory, petal
bones,
in white, dark
seeds.
~ Jan Bottiglieri
From Alloy: Poems by Jan Bottiglieri (Mayapple Press, 2015), p. 75.
One reason I like Jan Bottiglieri’s poem is that it brings back memories from my childhood. Our pastor, Elmer Dierks (called Daddy D by University of Iowa Students and others in our Iowa City church), cut an apple crosswise and used the seed star as the center of his “children’s sermon” every year at Christmastime. He also gave the same message to soldiers in train stations as they were transported across the country during World War II. Sometimes I cut my apple crosswise just so I can see that star!
In addition to that, I spent a large portion of my childhood in the branches of an apple tree my grandfather planted for his grandchildren to climb.
Of course, I chose
this poem primarily because of its crafting. The line breaks are intentional, and
pace the reading in ways that make me stop and notice each word or phrase. The word “corecut” adds an interesting dimension. The backstory of the
apple, beginning with the sepals and the blossom, adds additional richness. Thinking of the sepals and blossom when cutting an apple seems to me to be a spiritual move.
Patrice Boyer Claeys is becoming known as an expert at the poetry craft called “cento.” Claeys did not write any of the lines of her poem. Each of the lines was written by a different poet (see the list of sources under the poem). But Claeys has skillfully assembled these orphaned lines into a beautiful new poem of her own. I think about this poem when eating a grapefruit.
Grapefruit
Your task is
peel
and then taste it,
clean and sharp as pepper
the slow puckering
like the flowing patterns of little rivers.
A half globe, as if by cupped hands
God descends,
sweet scent, bitter tongue
a handful of holy water.
~ Patrice Boyer Claeys
Cento Sources: Kirill Medvedev, Brian Swann, Jill Bialosky, Craig Arnold, Katherine Soniat, Michael McClure, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Wendy Videlock, Fady Joudah, Roisin Kelly
From SWWIM.org, November 26, 2020.
I think there is
something magical about the combination of lines that brings us "the
slow puckering / like the flowing patterns of little rivers."
I did not intentionally select two poems that each had a spiritual dimension! From the taste, "clean and sharp as pepper," and that puckering in the first stanza, the poem takes a surprise turn. The juice in that "half globe" becomes "a handful of holy water."
Fruit Poems Online
You can find links to ten poems about fruit, including the two mentioned in the first paragraph above, at https://interestingliterature.com/2017/07/10-of-the-best-poems-about-fruit/. Satirist Elisa Gabbert assembled a list of “Fruits Ruined by Poetry,” at https://electricliterature.com/ten-fruits-ruined-by-poetry/. Several of the links in this web page do not work, and several of the poems have such minor reference to the fruit in question that they wouldn’t be appropriate for this challenge. Nevertheless, you may want to check it out.
Fruit was the subject of a previous Poetry Challenge. You can read the example poems at https://wildamorris.blogspot.com/2017/02/february-2017-poetry-challenge.html, and the winning poems at https://wildamorris.blogspot.com/2017/02/february-poetry-challenge-winners-fruit.html.
The March Challenge:
PLEASE NOTE: THE SUBMISSION ADDRESS CHANGED RECENTLY.
ALSO, please follow the guidelines carefully. For example, if your name is at the top of the page or under the title instead of at the bottom, I might accidentally miss it when preparing to send the poems to a judge, and your poem could be disqualified as a result, since judging should be done blind. If it isn’t under your poem, I might mistype it. Also, if you don’t follow the directions in how to write the subject line of your email, your poem might be missed.
The challenge for this month is a poem about fruit in general or about some specific kind(s) of fruit.
Your poem may be serious or humorous. The fruit may be metaphoric, or literal. Title your poem unless it is in a form that discourages titles. Single-space. Note that the blog format does not accommodate long lines; if they are used, they have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the May 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print. Put your name and a brief third-person bio under your poem. Please keep the poem on the left margin (standard 1” margin). Do not put any part of your submission on a colored background. Do not use a fancy font and do not use a header or footer.
You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem, unless the poet has been a winner the last three months.
The deadline is March 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however, winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog). No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published. Decision of the judge or judges is final.
The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.
If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.
How to Submit Your Poem:
Send one poem only to wildamorris4[at]gmail[dot]com (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Put “March Poetry Challenge Submission” FOLLOWED BY YOUR NAME in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio UNDER THE POEM in your email and/or attachment. If the poem has been published before, please put that information UNDER the poem also. NOTE: If you sent your poem to my other email address, or do not use the correct subject line, the poem may get lost and not be considered for publication. Do not submit poems as PDF files. Please excuse repetition in stating the rules. You might be surprised how many poets do not adhere carefully to the guidelines.
Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem.
Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). or both. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However, I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.
Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but longer poems will be considered.
Bios: Jan Bottiglieri lives and writes in suburban Chicago. She is a professional editor, as well as a senior editor for the poetry annual RHINO, and holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Jan’s work has appeared in more than 40 journals and anthologies including december, Rattle, DIAGRAM, Willow Springs and New Poetry from the Midwest. She is the author of twos chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections: Alloy (Mayapple Press, 2015) and Everything Seems Significant (BlazeVox Books, 2019.) Visit www.janbottiglieri.com.
Patrice Boyer Claeys is the author of The Machinery of Grace (2020) and Lovely Daughter of the Shattering (2019). She collaborated with photographer Gail Goepfert on Honey from the Sun (2020), a book exploring the secret life of fruit. Recent work has appeared in Indolent Press, The Night Heron Barks, little somethings press, Burningword, Inflectionist Review, *82 Review and Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith. She was nominated for both Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Find her online at www.patriceboyerclaeys.com.
© Wilda Morris
